After 86 years, WTMJ-AM to end Wisconsin Badgers broadcasts

According to a memo sent to Journal Broadcast Group employees, WTMJ-AM announced it will "decline to renew" its agreement with Learfield Sports, radio rights holder for Wisconsin Badgers football. »Read Full Blog Post

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While I agree Steve Wexler has made plenty of boneheaded moves (replacing most WMJ morning and afternoon drive personalities and shutting down WKTI-FM) I believe he made the right call this time. There simply are more dollars coming in carrying Brewers, Bucks and Packers games. Remember, WTMJ is the originating station for Brewers, Packers and Bucks. That means not only does WTMJ get to sell the local affiliate commercial slots available, but they are also being paid to engineer and upload to satellite the network feeds for Brewers, Bucks and Packers. I worked at WTOQ-AM in Platteville for 18 months. One of my many duties was running the control board and playing local commercials for Packers, Brewers, Bucks, and on our FM side, Chicago Bears games. That was back when the Bears had their summer training camp in Platteville.

While WTMJ does have some conservative talking heads (Charlie Sykes, Dennis Miller, and Michael Savage), the station does have a respectable morning and to some extent afternoon drive programming that is a refreshing break for conservative talking heads. In the evening when there is no live sports, WTMJ has sports talk. That's as if three full-time sports talk stations in the Milwaukee market is not enough. The real station of Tea Party idiots is WISN-AM 1130. WISN has Mark Belling, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Vicki McKenna along with several other talking heads.

Oh well, molly and jrw can always listen to liberal talk radio. Oh yeah, thats right, there are no liberal talk radio stations because all attempts at that format with the exception of government subsidized NPR have been a failure. I guess the will of people that listen to broadcasters because the free market supports them proves some people do have brains.

Meanwhile, the ratings over at MSNBC keep consistently falling further and further taking Rachel, Ed, and Alec along with them.

Just Great! Now I can listen to the Best of Charlie Sykes or Clark Howard on Saturday afternoons instead of Badger football. Right up there with constant reminders of "breaking news". Time to move on! Actually - time for WEX to move on.

Learfield needed WTMJ more than WTMJ needed Learfield. If WTMJ was not receiving ANY advertising revenue to broadcast Badger games, then WTMJ was basically doing Learfield a favor. Now Learfield faces the challenge of airing their Badger games on a patchwork of lower-wattage radio stations. Learfield may have bitten off more than it can chew on this one.

WISN0-AM 1130 certainly has the wattage and WISN not only carried Brewers games for two years in the early 80s, but WISN also originated the Brewers network for those two years. While WISN does not have the same wattage as WTMJ-AM 620, the station of the conservative talkers still puts out a nice, strong signal, even at night. The catch is that WISN has made a name for itself with conservative talk. WISN management, actually Clear Channel's corporate office where ever it is, no doubt believes conservative talk generates better ratings than live sports broadcasts. Thus expect UW football and men's hoops to be carried on one of three local sports talk stations. UW athletics will be a natural fit. Perhaps even UW men's hockey might get covered. The last station I remember carrying UW men's hockey was WYKY 100.5 Columbus-Sun Prairie for a season or two in the mid 90s before Mr. Karma bought the station and converted it to sports talk. The hockey games no doubt did ok since adult contemporary music tends to pull its strongest audience mid mornings, mid days and afternoon drive.

This goes back to 1995 when Paul LaSage, the guy in charge, missed the deadline for getting their renewal bid in and TMJ lost the rights to Learfield. Wexler is correct to do this. Learfield wanted a deal that gave the Badgers a higher priority, and with Packers, Brewers and Bucks already having higher priority, TMJ just couldn't do that. If TMJ was still the rights-holder rather than just a network affiliate, maybe they could grant higher priority. But as just a network affiliate, TMJ has to give priority to the ones where it is the rights-holder.

Hey "The Right Way", you seem to be the only one who understands what's going on here. As usual most posting a comment only read the headline before making that comment. Refreshing to know that there's at least one other person who bothers to understand the story before blindly throwing blame. Thanks.

Actually with 162 regular season Brewers games, the dozen or so Brewers spring training games, the 20 Packers pre- and regular season games, and post season Brewers and Packers games, and however many Bucks pre- and regular season games, that's already a lot of live sports for WTMJ to carry. There is still the possibility of the Brewers contending late in September for a playoff spot via a Sunday afternoon game while the Packers are playing say the Vikings or Bears. Ditto in late April and early May in the years when the Bucks are in the playoffs and the Brewers are off to a decent start. WTMJ still has the flexibility to put one game on Lake FM and the larger draw on WTMJ.

Hardly the best football play by play announcer. If he's so great, why isn't he broadcasting NFL games? You'd think someone would have come knocking by now. And Mike Lucas? Don't get me started - should have been taken off the air years ago.

Not the biggest fan of LePay. Seems like a cool guy and used to really enjoy him, but like most modern announcers, gets too caught up in yelling, as if needs to do it to hear himself yell. Worst was last year when Utah State misses a field goal, Badgers escape in a game they didn't deserve to win, and he's screaming "Field goal NO GOOD GOOD NIGHT DRIVE HOME SAFELY!!!!" (wish could make the caps bigger to illustrate how loud he got). Way over the top and unnecessary, call the plays and keep it down a notch, when gets too loud just sounds like the typical arrogant Big 10 person who can't believe how incredible their team is, no matter how much they should be used to winning.